PHLY Philadelphia Eagles Podcast - BREAKING: Eagles sign Edge Rusher Arnold Ebiketie | PHLY Eagles Podcast

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

Howie Roseman, you sneaky dog, as ex-Falcons pass rusher Arnold Ebiketie joins Nolan smith and Jalyx Hunt on the edge in a post-Jaelan Phillips world. We're up for the late-night emergency pod. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

live from the Xfinity Mobile Studio and presented by our friends at Xfinity. We finally have it. We finally have a real free agency moment here at 1103 on a Thursday night. Bowulf, Fran Duffy, E.J. Smith and the Eagles have signed a pass rusher. E.J., tell us about it. We knew it was coming. Yeah, the Eagles have signed Arnold Ebiketti, former Falcons Edge Rusher, former Penn State standout, local guy, some would say. he signed to a one-year deal.

And yeah, this is a player. We've talked about a lot in quackatology, a very eaglesy player in the sense. Why didn't he win quackatology? I need somebody to figure out who beat him. This was the guy. He lost in the elite eight to Bradley Chubb. I just looked it up.

I was going to say, I feel like a tyrant out there might have put Elijah Veritucker over. No, Arnold. Don't throw this. This is your fault. Anyway, Arnold Evacetti. And by the way,

the clip that you just, put out when we talked about him. Not only did we explain why he would make a lot of sense for the Eagles, we also nailed the contract. Nailed it. Completely nailed the contract. This is reportedly a one year seven and a half-ish up to number, but it's like a four and a half guarantee. Fran, what do you make of it? What kind of player are the Eagles getting? Yeah, I think when you look at Evacati clearly as a former second round pick, didn't quite live up to what the pre-draft type was with him but this is a player that definitely has the quote unquote tools in his body to live up to you know what some of that hype was with him uh i think when you look at it to me like a well-rounded

pass rusher right like maybe doesn't have that that a physical trait like that one thing that makes him special that was one of the things that gave me pause about him when he was coming out of Penn State but i do think that when you look at him are he can do a little bit of holding up at the point of attack he can turn the corner and give you a little bit of pass rush juice he can he can drop in reverse a little bit. He's got modest size across the board. He's kind of built like Ojalari where he's short, but he's got long arms. So I talk about that a year ago.

I kind of like guys with that body type. Nolan Smith is that way as well, where you've got a small strike zone for offensive tackles to be able to hit, but you can get into their pads faster than they get into you. So I think when you look at Epicady, there's a lot to like. And actually, I've got my profile up on him from the 2022 draft. my comp on him was Agbanya Okarako. So maybe it was a little bit of synergy there in terms of the way that he could fit in this Eagle scheme.

Yeah, that's that natural leverage, right, Fran? You're short with the long arms. We love that. We love those traits. Arnold, Debicketti, 6-2-250. And as you said, it's been a little bit up and down in his career. Six sacks in 2023, six sacks in 2024. But then the Falcons add two edge guys high in the draft last year.

year and he gets displaced a little bit, only two sacks. That season from 2023, he missed some time, but that was his best season in the league. He had those six sacks, but only in 163 pass rush snaps, hit the quarterback at a very high 6.1% rate, while also dropping almost 30% of the time on pass down. So he did a little bit of everything that year. Production became a little bit less efficient, although he was pretty good in 2024 as well. I mean, it is okay to be skeptical about this, given like the way the OJolari thing played out last year.

But I think there's also a reason to be optimistic and what the Eagles have done now is at the moment with Jalick Hunt and Nolan Smith at the top, they have done enough with just this sounding alone to sort of draft proof this position. And if they made no other additions, no other additions on the edge this offseason, they could go into the season with like keeping their eye out.

I think it is likely they still do something else here eventually, but I think this is the move that they needed to do to sort of set themselves up for the rest of the offseason. Yeah, so I would compare this to the Ojalari, the process that leads you to Aziz Ojalari, a player that you think has their best football ahead of them, that you can sign on a one year, prove it deal, and hope that, you know, a better environment.

And I think also it's important to note with Evacati that he took a pre-draft visit with the Eagles. You know, he's somebody who they are familiar with. He was actually a temple guy before he was a Penn State standout, right, Fran? So, yeah, I mean, so I think that there will be some, some, you know, some intel that you'd have on him based off of the pre-draft scouting process. It would not shock me to hear how he rose and talk about that the next time we talked to him about Arnold Ebikady. But because of the Aziz Osir Lari, the way the results with Aziz Ojalari still would think that you can't really go into the season fully expecting that he's going to be part of your rotation. You know, I think it's reasonable to expect it based off of, you know, what we've seen from him.

But the OjoLari experience kind of tells you, like, you still probably want to add somebody that you feel really confident being a part of that address your rotation. I think I feel more confident that he will be part of the rotation than I did. Yeah, I think that's fair. Yeah, I mean, the injuries, you know, aren't quite the same factor that they were with OjoLari. Right. I think this makes a lot of sense. Now, in a post-Gel and Phillips world, this doesn't, this doesn't, obviously. take that place.

But your teams change and your team's starting lineup changes. The price of your internet, though, doesn't have to. Check out the five-year price guarantee with our friends at Xfinity. Comp pick-wise for the sickos out there, this is going to likely cancel out either the Jahan Dotson signing or the Reed Blankenship signing, depending on the kind of season that he has and those other guys have. And so the Eagles probably right now looking at two compics next season, but the Jalen Phillips one,

likely a third still protect. I think that's good. They should not be too worried about a fifth or six-round compick at the expense of adding somebody like Ebiketti, even though that doesn't necessarily preclude them from still trading for Jonathan Gunnar if they wanted to. That was going to be my question. Can I give you a weird analogy of PHOI?

Like it's, you know, PHOI after dark. It's almost midnight. Like I can have a bad analogy. So let's see. Let's try this one on for size here. I stopped before. So to me like Arnold Evacati, like is kind of like it lowers the urgency to have to trade for a Jonathan Grenard similar to like

the Patriot signing Romeo Dobbs and saying like I don't need AJ Brown you know like you probably could still use a Jonathan Grenard or another you know a guy who you feel like is going to be at the top of that rotation but at the very least this kind of makes you a little bit less desperate if you are in those trade talks so maybe maybe there's a little bit of a motivation there for this signing as well it's just funny that you've gone from I in my opinion overrating Romeo. Dobson now comparing him to the one year six year six million or six million dollar contract for ronald ever like you said by the way you were right but i like the analogy i have i have looked it up ej you are correct it is eva katy yeah i i saw it i've got his pro football

reference page in front of me that's why that's why i switched up midway through the show there epicady there you go and yes the commenters are correct when you when you preface it with it's almost midnight it's after dark the insinuation is you're you're going to make some kind of loo. Yeah, you guys already know that my mind doesn't go there. Like I just, that's not, that's not me, you know. All right. So this is, I mean, this is, this is a significant signing. This is a real signing. Do you, do you think that this constitutes the big, the big thing to come this week? I, I, to me, I was, I was looking at this in terms of like, all right, players in and out for all the teams around the league. I was getting ready for something for the newsletter that's

dropping tomorrow, the all-unfile draft newsletter. And I'm looking at it. I'm like, man, like, all right, You lose Ushay, you lose Ojalari, Okaranko is still a free age. Obviously, you lose Jalen Phillips. Like, I actually don't think they're done at this position. Now, it's probable that it's more swings like this as opposed to a trade for Jonathan Grenard, a Josh Sweat. Obviously, Max Crosby being the other big name there. But, yeah, I don't know. To me, I as I look through the market and see who are the other names that kind of makes sense there.

So let me ask you this. If the offseason heading into the draft is everything they've done so far, it's Rick Wulin is the headline edition, Arnold Ebakedi, Dallas Goddard comes back, you add like a Jalen Hawkins level safety to compete with Michael Carter, opposite Drew McCuba. Maybe they sign some backup offensive linemen for $2 million, and that's it. do you feel like they have it has been mission accomplished heading into the draft i think that's probably i think that's probably like the the minimum right that you would say like all right that they've done

enough um because we because we know like if we if we if we hear from high rose and it'll be like uh you know the off season we don't play a game tomorrow we've got plenty of off season left of all the players you've added in in may in june in recent year so um yeah i think that going into the draft with those being the acquisitions uh you could definitely do worse Yeah, the thing for me, I think it's, you could, you would feel okay about it. I feel like what we know about Howie Roseman, even though he does often say that we don't have to play a game tomorrow, I would be, I would expect there to be more firepower than that between now on the draft.

You could get away with it. You could go into the draft. You could leave it late in the offseason. I think that there's probably more, you know, shoes to drop here for, for some of the roster building decisions because, you know, I mean, I think. Jonathan Grenard is the one that we're talking about right now, but there's going to be opportunities, and you know that how he's going to be aggressive with those.

E.J., were you a Hey Arnold kid? You feel like that was right in your real house. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Come on. Yeah. Hey, Arnold was like top, top three show for me as a kid. Yeah. Wow. Now, what's sad is I don't retain much of it, but yeah, it's a great show.

Okay. I was too old for it, but my siblings watch it, and I did enjoy. Yes. Great show. Yeah. Good show. All right, we got a lot to unpack here.

That's all you need to know about Arnold, geez, Donald, Haiti. Yeah, I got you. For now, we will be with you live tomorrow at 2 o'clock. We're going to grind some film on Mr. Arnold. And I remember last year, Fran, you had liked Aziz O'Jolari in the pre-draft process, and you got to work on the free agency film,

and you were pretty overwhelmed. So I'm going to be curious to hear what you have to say about Ebikati, and we're going to find out if there's anything else to come. But this is a lot of fun. Now, it is almost midnight. There's a lot of you watching live. Hit that like button, please. Let us know what you think about the Abikati edition.

And Fran, I'm going to tee you up to give me some concise thoughts on this edition before we head out. To me, when you look at the addition of Arnold Ebikati, this makes a lot of sense in a lot of different fronts. This is a player that's got draft pedigree. He's got tools in his body to be able to come in and impact the game in a number of different ways. in that he can rush the passer. He's got the ability to flatten the edge. He did it at Penn State. He started his career at Temple,

so has the local ties there. He can hold up at the point of attack. He can drop back in reverse and coverage. So all the different things that Vic Fangio is going to ask those edge rushers to do. We know that Evacati's got that ability to do that. There's a lot of reasons I think that his best football is ahead of him. So I do like the addition from that standpoint. It's a one-year deal.

Decent money. It's not going to hurt you in the comp pick game. Yeah, I think this edition makes a lot of sense. Boom. Just like that. What a pro. YouTube short has been cut. Nicely done.

That'll do it for this episode of the PHLY Eagles podcast, an emergency edition for you at 1115 at night. Thank you for joining us. Let us know what you think of the signing in the comments. And join us tomorrow at 2 o'clock for a regular edition of the PHOY Eagles show for Lindsay, making it happen late night and Fran and E.J. I'm Bowie. Thank you for watching.

And as always, we love you. Thank you.